Tuesday, July 7, 2009

"New York" in Varanasi

Going to a Hollywood film in Hindi is part of the plan for the program we are on, perhaps to teach us that not all of this city is as 16th-century as the Nagwa neighborhood we are living in.

We take the Nirwan van and an autorita-type rickshaw into the city center to--yes--a mall.

A security gate like those in airports guards the entrance to the mall. Our bags are checked, and we are scanned with a wand and patted down. Then to go to the second floor we are checked again, and at the entrance to the theater more severely screened by Army-officer-looking guards.

The poster for the film shows the two young male and female co-stars in a fierce-arm-wrestling pose (see above)

We sit down in an elegant new theater with reclining plush seats to watch New York directed by Kabir Khan.

This film about the impact of 9/11 on Iranian-American Muslims begins with one young man abducted by the FBI, then "persuaded" to spy on someone he knew in college several years earlier, who may be part of a sleeper cell.

Without English subtitles, it was very hard to understand--every now and then I caught words like "likken" ("but"), "aur" ("and"), and other not-too-useful clues.

It was surreal to be in Varanasi watching a fantasy-version of New York--"New York State University" (not SUNY) that has grassy lawns with a backdrop of skyscrapers. The campus looked like Trinity College in Hartford. The characters watched the 9/11 events going from the first plane to the tower collapse in 60 seconds.

About half an hour into the film, a waiter handed me a menu apparently asking if I or anyone in my party wanted to order pizza. I declined.

Then came intermission (the film was 3 1/2 hrs long). At the break, everyone in our group tried to hear from Nita Kumar what had happened or explained her own theory.

I turned to two young men in the row behind us, who wanted to practice their English, and asked, "Is Sam actually in a sleeper terrorist cell or not?" Sam had been innocently arrested, then tortured, then resumed his life.

"Yes," they said.

"Does he own Omar now?" I asked because the would-be spy had been caught by his friend and forced to kill a man and to join the cell.

"Yes," they said, explaining more, but the film began again.

Apparently Omar becomes a double-agent because his friend discovers him, the friend's wife nearly shoots him for it, and Omar is forced to kill a man and join the gang-like cell.

The last hour of multiple shootings and jumping off skyscrapers a la The Godfather scared me to death--I don't watch films like this if I can help it.

But as we walked out past the security checks, I thought about all the suicide bombers and terrorists of various stripes in the various countries of the world.

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In memory of Martha Puebla & In honor of Maria Riveros

On a spring night in 2003, Martha Puebla, age 16, was shot in the face while sitting outside her home in Sun Valley, California, near Los Angeles. Her death was ordered by a gang member on trial for a murder she had witnessed.

On July 13, 2008, in San Ignacio, Paraguay, Maria Riveros took her pregnant 16-year-old daughter to the home of an obstetrician and asked her to perform an abortion. The fetus of about 4 mo. was buried outside the home, but there were complications and the next day Maria had to rush her daughter to a hospital, where a hysterectomy was performed. The obstetrician and her daughter, a nurse, were arrested and charged with performing an abortion.

This blog is dedicated to Martha, Maria and all women who courageously negotiate their lives in this world filled with gang warfare and international warfare, poverty and wealth, drug trafficking and addiction, and lack of access to birth control, legal abortion, and other health care.